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Interested in a back-to-school e-reader, but you're not sure which one to buy? Barnes & Noble made a case for the Nook on Monday, with $100 in free books for the returning student.

B&N said that customers who purchase a new Nook from today until Sept. 11 will receive $100 in free books and study tools, specifically a free collection of 12 free classic books and 12 SparkNotes study aids.

The books will help any aspiring literature major, and include A Tale of Two Cities, Beowulf, Ivanhoe, Crime and Punishment and The Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man. The SparkNotes guides include To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, B&N said.

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Hot on the heels of our Barnes & Noble nook unboxing gallery, we got a ton of requests from you guys asking us to compare the nook directly against the Kindle 2. So we put the nook right up against Amazon’s Kindle 2, and shot some photos. In a nutshell, the nook is smaller in length and width, but is a little but thicker than the Kindle 2. I personally don’t think one has an advantage over the other in terms of size, but hey, check out the nook vs Kindle size comparison gallery, and judge for yourself, mmkay?

We just landed a Barnes & Noble nook, and while our review is forthcoming, we figured it’d only be appropriate to hit you with a nice gallery of unboxing photos of the device aimed to take on the Amazon Kindle. We give you a look at the nook packaging, touchscreen, welcome screen, and of course, multiple views of the hardware itself. Our early impressions? The nook is nice, and feel great in the hand.

Head on over to our unboxing gallery to check out our Barnes & Noble nook photos, and let us know what you think, and what you want to hear about!

Looks like Barnes & Noble is just as enthusiastic about getting their Nook e-reader into your hands as you are. If you pre-order a Nook, you’ll even get upgraded to free Expedited Air Service shipping. That’s basically overnight, saving you about $24 or so. Seriously, this thing blow the Kindle out of the water, so what are you waiting for?

Someone over on the Barnes & Noble web team seems to have jumped the gun, because the official Nook site was up for a few minutes, before quickly being pulled down. Luckily, we were able to get in, and even pre-order a unit, before things got pulled. The B&N Nook e-reader runs Android, and looks like it’ll give the Amazon Kindle a run for its money.

The device features a 6-inch screen, with a 3.5-inch color touchscreen beneath it. This gives you a quick method to browse your library, the store, and input text into the device. Definitely much easier than the Kindle’s hard keyboard. The device measures in at 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.5-inches, and weighs 11.2 ounces. You get 10 days of battery life if you turn off wireless, and the battery takes 3.5 hours to go from empty to full when plugged into a wall outlet. Speaking of wireless, the Nook actually sports both a 3G connection from AT&T, as well as built-in Wi-Fi 802.11b/g. Definitely an advantage over the Kindle, because even if you have poor cell reception, you can just connect to Wi-Fi to download a book. The Nook also includes 2GB of internal storage (enough to hold 1500 books,) a microSD slot for adding even more storage, MP3 playback, built-in speaker, headphone jack, and micro USB port for charging and syncing.

So, aside from the above, what sets this thing apart from the Kindle? For starters, you can lend books to friends for up to two weeks at a time, and they don’t even need a Nook of their own. They can access the Nook book content on an iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, PC, or Mac. The lending of literature is one thing that went away with the Kindle, and we are happy to see it return with Nook. The Barnes & Noble store also has over a million titles available for download, with more than 500,000 of those being free ebooks. The Nook can also read PDFs, something the Kindle 2 can’t do.

Looks like Barnes & Noble is set to take the wraps off of their ebook reader tomorrow, and according to the Wall Street Journal, it’ll be the Barnes & Noble Nook that they’ll be unveiling. The Nook, pictured above (thanks Giz,) is unique because it has a standard e-ink display like the Kindle, but also sports a color touchscreen beneath the traditional display. Why? Well, try typing anything of length on an Amazon Kindle, and you’ll quickly realize that even that task could use some help. The Barnes & Noble Nook will sell for $259 (same price as the Kindle,) and will also allow users to lend e-books to friends. Obviously, we can’t wait to see it. We’ve got one more image for you after the jump.